“There’s an IC sitting out there who just had an amazing idea for a new feature/product. What happens?”
Sounds like a good question, but the answer doesn't really matter, because it depends on whether the business actually wants to implement the idea. And if they do, it needs to sound like it's coming from an executive, because if it's not, they'll be embarrassed and try to crush the idea. So if the dev really wants the idea to get into product, they should be funneling the idea through their manager or through a product or sales back-channel.
“Tell me about your last major migration. How long did it take and how long did you say it was going to take before you started?”
Bad question, because they always take longer than they expect and always run into problems, and if they don't they were just lucky. You're asking them to either embarrass themselves to you in the interview, or lie. Not going to give them great feels to remember when they think about your candidacy. Maybe ask them about migrations to see how often they do them, but don't lead them to tell you something specific.
“Let’s say I’m the person you hire. 6 months have gone by, what’s different?”
> You’d be surprised how often I ask this question and the answer I get back is something like “you’ll be here and doing the job”
Yeah, because this is a really bad question. It's not their job to make you have an impact. It's your job to make an impact. That's why it's a job. The question should be them asking you what you will do in those 6 months to make a difference.
> Sounds like a good question, but the answer doesn't really matter, because it depends on whether the business actually wants to implement the idea. And if they do, it needs to sound like it's coming from an executive, because if it's not, they'll be embarrassed and try to crush the idea. So if the dev really wants the idea to get into product, they should be funneling the idea through their manager or through a product or sales back-channel.
Isn't this exactly the kind of answer that the question is meant to tease out, so that the candidate can know ahead of time that the company is more interested in executives' status than in innovating?
I'm trying to figure out why you're framing this as a reason to not use the question instead of a great example of its utility.
> Isn't this exactly the kind of answer that the question is meant to tease out, so that the candidate can know ahead of time that the company is more interested in executives' status than in innovating?
This is like asking if sharks like the taste of blood. Any answer other than the obvious is a shark looking for a meal.
Executives only exist because they are obsessed with status/power, the share price, the market cap, competition, winning. That is their purpose in life. If they cared more about innovation, they wouldn't be executives, they'd be engineers.
It's not impossible for an engineer to get an idea into a product. But they have to know how to swim with sharks.
This makes me sad for the companies you worked for. I'm at the director level at my company, and I make sure to both give credit to whomever does good work, and to enable them to do it. I do enough good work of my own that I don't need to steal credit to be successful.
I mean more like C- and V-suite. Their priority is the company, and their own promotions. In order for both to excel, they need control, and to encourage the path they are trying to go down, and not side quests. This includes their reports and so on. There is a natural order to the hierarchical work of giving the upper-class what they want. As my last boss was very fond of reminding me: "this is not a democracy."
Yea these questions aren’t great but if you want to ask these type of questions a better version would be:
- “Can you tell me about the last time an IC on your team turned an idea into a feature/product? What was the process?”
This can pinpoint whether the manager has a record of helping their directs get their own ideas into the product.
- “Tell me about the challenges you ran into in your last major migration, how did you decide what technical debt falls below the line?”
All migrations end up being late due to unknown unknowns, but you probably want to learn a little bit about how they managed the situation and how they decided to cut scope to still meet the new deadline. Or you could go with something like “tell me about the first 6 months of your most recent hire.”
The “6 months have gone by, what’s different?” Is just a bad question. If what you’re trying to figure out is how you’ll transition from onboarding to full team member why not just ask about that directly?
Also if you wanna social engineer the interview with this type of strategy, you probably should ask questions that are less focused on what they will do for you and more focused on how you can impact the organization.
I agree with your first and last answer. This is why most people can't make an impact. Even if you _could_ make one, too many layers of permission often kills the potential, or just as worse, the idea is greenlit and some other engineer with seniority leads the project; robbing you of the chance to make an impact.
Sounds like a good question, but the answer doesn't really matter, because it depends on whether the business actually wants to implement the idea. And if they do, it needs to sound like it's coming from an executive, because if it's not, they'll be embarrassed and try to crush the idea. So if the dev really wants the idea to get into product, they should be funneling the idea through their manager or through a product or sales back-channel.
“Tell me about your last major migration. How long did it take and how long did you say it was going to take before you started?”
Bad question, because they always take longer than they expect and always run into problems, and if they don't they were just lucky. You're asking them to either embarrass themselves to you in the interview, or lie. Not going to give them great feels to remember when they think about your candidacy. Maybe ask them about migrations to see how often they do them, but don't lead them to tell you something specific.
“Let’s say I’m the person you hire. 6 months have gone by, what’s different?”
> You’d be surprised how often I ask this question and the answer I get back is something like “you’ll be here and doing the job”
Yeah, because this is a really bad question. It's not their job to make you have an impact. It's your job to make an impact. That's why it's a job. The question should be them asking you what you will do in those 6 months to make a difference.